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First off, Sci is sorry for two things: 1) Comments on this post are still disabled due to server issues. If you email me with something particularly witty and clever, perhaps I can tweet it. Or edit it on to the post. Or something. 2) Sci has a migraine of rather titanic proportions right now [...]... Read more »

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(...) Although these adult sea squirts, or tunicates, don't consist of much more than translucent sacks with intestines, their larval "tadpole" stage exhibits all characteristics of the chordates. This means that they are actually more closely related to us chordate humans than this crab is!

In fact, transparent sea squirts are so similar to us that they may prove to be important for the development of more effective treatments for Alzheimer's disease.... Read more »

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In this week's Journal of Neuroscience, researchers have shown that BDNF gates cocaine self-administration in rodents. These findings are comparable to those found with alcohol intake in rodents. Perhaps a BDNF pharmaceutical is the future, more efficacious therapeutic for the treatment of alcoholism... Read more »

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In this post, our heroine — spurred on by her godly pursuit of science and a bevy of caffeinated drinks — compares the standard approach to language to intelligent design. It might get noodly. Pick one : Does language “emerge” full-blown in children, guided by a hierarchy of inbuilt grammatical rules for sentence formation and comprehension? Or [...]... Read more »

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In summer and autumn, spiders become more noticeable. The tiny spiderlings born in the spring have now become adults and males are wandering in search of females. One of the most common spider species in the UK is the elegantly marked Linyphia triangularis (female above). This spider makes a sheet web with criss-crossing silk lines over it in low bushes and trees. The spider hangs belly up from the underneath the sheet. Flying insects colliding with the transversal lines fall onto the........ Read more »

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[Wherein our hero - having gone AWOL - is posting old thoughts that might still be relevant. They're interesting, at the very least.... one hopes] As I’ve mentioned previously I’ve already attained a degree. I mention this because the body of this post represents the strangest assignment I’ve received in a full 6 years of [...]... Read more »

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Ok, so you’re young, you’re surprisingly dusty, and you don’t match the models. No, not a picture of my geeky childhood, but the extrasolar planet HR 8799b. It orbits the star HR 8799 and, along with its two companions, is one of the two extrasolar planetary systems to be directly imaged, as shown above. Unsurprisingly [...]... Read more »

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One of the big news stories from last year was the revelation that Americans are leaving their churches and religious institutions in droves. They are becoming "unaffiliated", although there was a lot of debate over what that meant. Are Americans losing religion, or is it simply that they are disillusioned with what they're being offered?

A new analysis, using data collected over the last three decades by the General Social Survey, sheds some light on this - and also tells us more about just wh........ Read more »

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Esophageal cancer is currently the eighth most common human cancer, with esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) being the most common subtype. Tobacco and alcohol use are the most prevalent causes of ESCC; however, limited evidence suggests that infectious agents--in particular, human papillomavirus (HPV)--are linked to ESCC. Antonsson et al. recently analyzed HPV prevalence and lifestyle factors in ESCC patients. Archived tumor samples from a nationwide cohort of 222 ESCC patients in Austral........ Read more »

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For all you soccer/football/fútbol/calcio fans out there, you may have been watching the 1997 Confederations Cup match between Brazil and France when Roberto Carlos lined up for a 35 meter (115 ft.), relatively long, free kick. Then you either screamed in unbridled joy or a crying disgust as Carlos appeared to botch the free kick [...]... Read more »

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So it's done. I've accepted it. There will be no playoff entry for the Mets this year—something that was evident earlier in the year, but the motto of this team is "Ya gotta believe." So you know, I had to believe. Am I disappointed? Yes. What fan wouldn't be? Am I surprised? No. What Mets fan would be? Does it mean that I won't be there come spring anxiously awaiting the crack of the bat?

Why is this post inappropriate?

I haven’t done this before but I wanted to revisit the post I made last week about sub-optimal walking in the light of new information. You see, we had a journal club about the paper yesterday in which interesting discussions were had about the paper and the results – and the conclusions drawn from those results.If you recall, the central thesis of the paper is that we over-correct for deviations in our stride length and stride time that draw us away from the line of constant velocity (the G........ Read more »

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Carbon dioxide releases by hurricanes are significant, but offset by ocean cooling and phytoplankton growth

A hurricane’s passage over warm ocean waters can drive a significant amount of carbon dioxide from the waves to the sky. The violent winds associated with a passing storm can dramatically increase the gas exchange between the ocean and [...]... Read more »

P. Huang, & J. Imberger. (2010) Variation of pCO2 in ocean surface water in response to the passage of a hurricane. J. Geophys. Res. info:/10.1029/2010JC006185

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An information-saturated society is going to notice plenty of weird correlations, like the Blade Runner curse or the unfortunate fate of American presidents elected in years that ended in a zero (for a long time beginning in 1860, all died in office). The more data we collect, the more patterns we see. Iran leads the world in nose-jobs per capita. Major wars have been preceded by stock-market plunges on the other side of the world. It's increasingly easy to find unexpected alignments betw........ Read more »

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The latest stop in the #PDEx tour is being hosted by The Intersection at Discover magazine.Despite the advances our society has made for women’s rights and sexual equality during the last century this example is just one more sign of how far we still have to go. It’s not an isolated incident. According to statistics compiled by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission there were 12,696 workplace sexual harassment cases filed in 2009 (which would be a fraction of the number that actuall........ Read more »

Why is this post inappropriate?

The latest stop in the #PDEx tour is being hosted by The Intersection at Discover magazine.Despite the advances our society has made for women’s rights and sexual equality during the last century this example is just one more sign of how far we still have to go. It’s not an isolated incident. According to statistics compiled by the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission there were 12,696 workplace sexual harassment cases filed in 2009 (which would be a fraction of the number that actuall........ Read more »

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In August, the Finnish President signed a new law to end the display of tobacco products in the country’s shops. It’s a timely move and one that’s being mirrored across the world. Scotland, for example, is pressing ahead with its own law. The Coalition Government in Westminster is considering whether to take this step, given [...]... Read more »

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Public transportation, like, say, public health or the public library, just isn’t sexy. But a fat slob isn’t sexy, either, is he? And with public transportation, he could build a sexy new physique in only 6 to 8 months, according to a recent publication in the the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.... Read more »

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Loneliness is bad for your health. The work of John Cacioppo and others has proven this connection repeatedly over the last decade, finding links between loneliness and blood pressure, sleep quality, dementia, gene expression, and many other medical measures. The evidence has built to the point that loneliness could be considered a serious risk factor [...]... Read more »

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Yesterday, I covered some of the key pathways and kinases associated with cell energy metabolism, LKB1 and AMPK. These, together with Insulin-like Growth Factor-I (IGF-I) and the insulin receptor (IR), appear to play important roles in the broader regulation of...... Read more »

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